OMA Device Management Connectivity Management Objects (ConnMO) V1.0
Other OMA DM and common specifications define the syntax and semantics of the OMA DM protocol. However, the usefulness of such a protocol would be limited if the managed entities in devices required different data formats and displayed different behaviors. Central to the management of any suite of devices is the ability to configure and update the basic connectivity settings in each device. To avoid the situation where each device vendor defines a specialized and nonstandard arrangement for managing connectivity parameters, this enabler defines a set of management objects to permit the standardized representation and management of connectivity parameters in devices. The connectivity data model defined by the specifications enables the exchange of bearer configuration over the air, using the DM protocols, through files on smart cards and storage cards, or by using as yet unanticipated means.
Since device manufacturers will always develop new functions in their devices and since these functions often are proprietary, no standardized management objects will exist for them. To make these functions manageable in the devices that have them, a device description framework is needed that can provide servers with the necessary information they must have in order to manage the new functions. The intention with this framework is that device manufacturers will publish descriptions of their devices as they enter the market. Organizations operating device management servers should then only have to feed the new description to their servers for them to automatically recognize and manage the new functions in the devices.
The introduction of vendor-specific extensions to these standardized objects is anticipated. Each management object contains several points of extension for arbitrary use by client implementations to allow collocation of proprietary innovations along with the standardized parameters. It is anticipated that vendors will include their implementation-specific extensions in published DDF that describes the management objects supported by each terminal model.
Finally, it is usual to find over time that network protocols grow and are replaced as the market cycle plays out. These management objects are structured in such a way as to be resilient to the addition of new bearer and proxy types without requiring wholesale replacement of the object definitions. In this way, the common structure survives into future versions of the management objects thus easing the burden of transition from old bearer types to new.